The present invention relates to an interactive plant monitoring system for interactively monitoring at a plant.
In a plant monitoring control system using a computer, various interactive functions are generally provided for the purpose of supplying an operator with various process quantities.
For example, in a computer system for the control/monitoring of an electric power station, there are provided as many as one hundred interactive functions whose functions are realized by using interactive devices constructed of CRT displays, keyboards, screen pointers and the like.
One of the fundamental principles in operating an interactive device is to design it so as to allow access to desired data with as small number of operation procedures as possible.
It can thus be thought of that an operation key is provided for each of interactive functions so that each interactive function can be directly chosen upon operation of the corresponding key. However, it becomes necessary to provide a great number of operation keys, resulting in a bulky keyboard and in a difficulty of quickly finding a proper key.
In order to prevent interactive devices from swelling to a bulky size and being unable to find a proper function at once, it has been proposed recently to display interactive function operation key symbols on the lower portion of the screen of a CRT display and select a key symbol proper to the desired interactive function by using a screen pointer.
In the above case, there is also proposed to display a screen image dedicated to the interactive operation only for the purpose of efficiently selecting a desired function.
Further, since all operation functions cannot be displayed on a single screen at a time, the operation functions are time divisionally displayed on the screen. In this case, the operation functions most frequently used in the past are allocated to be displayed on the screen, so that a proper function can be selected with a fewer number of operation procedures by an operator.
Such a display allocation of operation functions in a conventional system has been fixedly set at the time of system design, thus posing the following problems.
Namely, since the operation functions necessary for the monitor of a plant change with the plant condition and its operation state, there occur cases that take a long time to find a proper function.
For example, the operation function items for a thermal power generating plant change in accordance with the plant conditions (1) during start/stop operation, (2) at normal running, (3) during plant stoppage, and (4) upon occurrence of an urgent trouble.
During start/stop operation, an operator is busiest, so there is often used a function of displaying a plant system diagram and a trend graph indicative of the time sequence of state quantities.
During normal running, the plant is stable so that the number of interactive operation requests is relatively small. Also, during this normal running, the frequency of using the functions relating to plant performance management becomes high.
During plant stoppage, although monitoring for the plant is less, the frequency of using the test functions for maintenance becomes high.
Upon occurrence of an urgent trouble of the plant, similar to the start/stop operation, the functions of displaying the plant system diagram and trend graph are much used. In addition, the frequency of using the interactive function for dealing with trouble becomes very large.
As described above, the interactive function to be used changes greatly in accordance with the plant operation conditions. With a conventional system, therefore, in some cases, a number of operation steps are required in order to select a proper interactive function.